Why doing the things you love makes you healthy
Guest Blogger Anita Chaperon from FitHappyHealthy.com
This month I wanted to bring to your attention an often overlooked side of a healthy lifestyle.
Most of us think of dieting and exercising when we think of losing weight or just maintaining good health. But there is a much bigger underlying factor that will help or hinder your efforts.
The foundation of all your health related efforts is happiness and peace of mind.
No it’s not an airy-fairy unattainable thing.
And no it isn’t reserved specially for the more fortunate and richer echelons of society. It’s something that can be had every single day of our lives – if we were ready to work at it, and if we knew HOW to work at it.
OK, so this was the WHAT – peace of mind and happiness = health, healthy weight loss and ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle for a long long time.
Here’s the WHY
The WHY behind the concept of experiencing happiness and peace of mind every day is really straight forward.
If we are stressed and unhappy (even if we don’t consciously realize it) our body’s hormonal system doesn’t function properly. And from that stem a platitude of physiological problems that manifest themselves in psychological problems eventually (or right away in the case of PMS).
For example – if you were to be stressed at work because of a deadline or a cranky customer. Your adrenal glands switch on what is called your ‘fight or flight’ response unit. Which in turn activates the production of cortisol to ‘fuel’ your heightened needs for performance.
This in itself is designed exactly for the purpose of saving our butts in case of an emergency. The problem however becomes serious when you’re in the state of stress every day (chronically).
Chronic stress places an enormous amount of pressure on your adrenal glands. Cortisol is constantly elevated, which affects your immune system, and your main hormones (like testosterone, estrogen, thyroid…) to name just a few.
Remain under stress for long periods of time without sufficiently recovering, and your hormones, and consequently your entire bodily functions spiral out of tune with different and often permanent consequences.
All this complex stuff narrows down to one thing: chronic stress = weight gain and excess weight lock due to disturbed physiological functions. There are no two ways about this.
Now, the topic of hormonal effect on weight loss/weight gain is a rather complex story. But I wanted to illustrate to you here that the age old expression of “I thrive on stress” is not something to take pride in. It’s something to take note of and take steps to remedy, because stress sooner or later it will come back to thrive on you.
Here’s the HOW
Do at least ONE THING EVERY DAY that makes you truly happy and glad to be alive.
OK, this is a very basic and highly effective technique to adopt as a daily habit. But it’s not the cure for the damage stress can cause. The point is to ground ourselves each day and to notice that life is worth living and enjoying. You have nothing but the present moment, and regardless of the pressures you face daily – stopping and making sure you’re still having fun is vital.
Here is a great post I found on the week end called 75 Simple Pleasures to Brighten Your Day (the ZenHabits.net blog BTW is one to bookmark).
And here’s my challenge to you: for the whole of September promise yourself to try this out.
Make a list of 30 things that make you feel truly happy and alive. It HAS to be something that YOU LOVE doing. Be it kissing your partner good morning. Or hugging your child. Or taking a walk on the beach. A ten minute meditation. A manicure. A massage. Sex… you think about it and make a list.
Just as an aside the list should not include eating a packet of biscuits or a bag of crisps a day – please think in terms of ‘good for you things’ :o)
So make the list – and then commit to doing one thing every day that makes you happy.
I’ve even created a template for you. All you have to do is click on the image to the left, download and print the PDF, and get doing. Each day – tick off what you’ve done. If you do the same thing more than once in the month – then put all the ticks on that line. But do it for 30 days in a row – and see how it makes you feel…
Be happy – be you,
Anita
For more health and fitness ideas and inspiration visit Anita’s blog FitHappyHealthy.com, she’ll be back next month with more great ideas, thanks Anita!